WHAT HAPPENS WHEN...

Buttering the muffin. Diddling Miss Daisy. Jilling off. Whether you recruit the assistance of a handheld device or take matters into your own hands, here’s what goes down when you have a ménage à moi…

...you masturbate

HAVING A PLANK

That stored-to-memory image of Ryan Gosling is working wonders. ‘When you feel aroused, the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline are released, increasing your heart rate and blood pressure, leading to engorgement of the vagina and clitoris,’ explains Dr Sheila Radhakrishnan, consultant in gynaecology and psychosexual medicine specialist at the Royal Free Hospital in London. They also cause your muscles to tense up, meaning masturbation is basically a workout. Double win.

BURIED PLEASURE

Stimulating any of your erogenous zones (the clitoris, nipples, vagina, cervix, but you do you – toes, anyone?) gets your sensory cortex firing. ‘This feeds information through to other parts of the brain, including the nucleus accumbens, the brain’s pleasure centre,’ says neuroscientist Professor Barry Komisaruk, who specialises in brain activity during sexual response (#Cvgoals). Orgasms are in mixed company – this brain region is also stimulated by caffeine, chocolate, nicotine and cocaine.

HOR-MOAN-AL

Adrenaline might get you going, but your endocrine system is just getting started. ‘We also see activation of the hypothalamus,’ says Professor Komisaruk, accounting for the rush of hormones that come when you do. These include the feel-good hormones dopamine and oxytocin. ‘The latter is the same hormone released during breastfeeding, so essentially its purpose is to help you bond,’ says Dr Radhakrishnan. Proof, should you need it, that masturbation is self-care.

COME AGAIN

Feeling all self-satisfied? Prolactin will do that.

‘The brain is flooded by this hormone after orgasm, making you feel fulfilled,’ says Dr Radhakrishnan.

But it can also make you feel sleepy. ‘It’s thought to be a regulator, to prevent the sexual stimulus starting again.’ Engaging in a 3am session to help you sleep? You might want to rope in a bedfellow. Research suggests that you release four times as much after orgasming through sex as you do when you go it alone*.

50 SHADES OF GREY MATTER

Just blown your own mind? Brain areas showing significantly higher levels of activity immediately before orgasm include the right angular gyrus, implicated in states of altered perception, like out-of-body experiences*. As to whether orgasms are better alone, the jury’s out. ‘In terms of brain activity, there’s no difference between orgasms achieved through self-stimulation or partner stimulation,’ says Professor Komisaruk. But women in the study did orgasm more quickly when masturbating. Just saying.